Archive for the ‘Halloween Candy’ Category

The task of collecting the annual “Halloween Stash” is a tough one, we know. You want to be the best on the block – the most popular house, the one the kids change their masks and come back to, the one they talk about the next day.

We at Candy Favorites know how it feels to achieve that honor (after all, we do have access to about 3,000 kinds of candy). So we’ve compiled a list of our favorites to help you achieve similar glory. We invite you to share your success (or horror) stories in the comments. After all, it takes a village to hand out great Halloween candy.

Top 5 Old-School Halloween Candies

5) Penny Candy Americana Mix – Old is the new new! Not for the faint of heart, this huge array of retro candies is best for parties, giving to a whole family, or securing your own Halloween stash. It’s not unnamed hard candy. It’s stuff you actually forgot you loved: Mary Janes, Bit O’ Honey, Necco Wafers, Atomic Fireballs, Goetz’s Caramel Creams, Root Beer Barrels, Jolly Ranchers, and other old-time favorites.

4) Brach’s Candy Corn – Brach’s is the candy of (just about everyone’s) childhood. If you’re a fan of classic candy corn, there’s none better. But if you’re excited for something newer, tastier, or chocolate-ier, Brach’s has got an array of super-sweet and more sophisticated flavors to choose from.

3) Brach’s Mellowcreme Pumpkins – These squat little treats are absolutely polarizing. While some avid fans pick through their friends’ Autumn Mix and hoard them, other kids will throw them at each other. Either way, you and your kids will have fun with them.

2) Palmer Pumpkin Pals – If it seems like Palmers makes a little foil-wrapped, melt-in-your-mouth chocolate treat for every holiday, sport, or event, it’s true. This is one of those candies you forget that you love until you run across it again. Every kid should have some Palmer chocolates in their trick-or-treat bag! As a bonus, the foil comes in handy for wrapping up the used middles of all those Blow Pops.

1) Wax Lips, Mustaches, or Fangs – The 70s are back: Red lipstick & Bushy Mustaches are SO in this year. These classic candies are tasty, fun to play with, and surprisingly new to tons of kids. These will get you dubbed “the cool house”, even if it’s only by other parents.

Top 5 Not-So-Old-School Halloween Candies

5) Pop Rocks Pumpkin Patch Orange – This mix of green and orange Halloween Pop Rocks is a limited edition. Better yet, no one is expecting pop rocks when they come to your door. They’ll make yours the top house on the block. They’re also fun to send to school with your kid.

3) Dark or Milk Chocolate Covered Peeps – Just because they’re peeps doesn’t mean they don’t deserve to dress up (as PUMPKINS!) for trick-or-treating, too! There’s no reason to let Peeps stay stuck in the Spring. Chocolate covered peeps make an interesting, cute, and unexpected addition to your array of Halloween treats.

2) York Peppermint Batty – An extra-special treat for all, these bat-shaped York Peppermint Patties are one of the candies most likely to be stolen by parents.

1) Reese’s Peanut Butter Pumpkins – Reese’s pumpkins are no laughing matter – especially when you get caught stealing them out of your little brother’s Halloween basket. Be sure to have enough this year to satiate even
the hungriest monsters (Dad!) and freeze some for yourself.

Not since the (now long past) beginning of Cadbury Mini Egg Season have specific-seasonal-candy fanatics been faced with such great opportunity. But with great potential for joy comes the threat of another year of strife! The time for Brachs Mellowcreme Pumpkin aficionados to act is now.

Thanks to CandyFavorites, you can stock up on Brachs Mellowcreme Pumpkinsnow. You can have them delivered to your door or directly to the person who hides secret deliveries for you. And you can receive them in a rare and profoundly satisfying 5-lb shipment. Don’t count on grocery or drug stores. Other people are staking out the truck-arrival times! (You work during the truck arrival times!) Get your Mellowcreme Pumpkins now, and not only will you have all the Mellowcreme-y goodness you could ever need. You’ll also be master of your domain.

As with any passion, we bond over our love of Brachs Mellowcreme Pumpkins. Over our frustration with Harvest Mix, over whether to cream them, over whether they actually contain fat. These passions cause us to lose friends, too. (But, you know, more Pumpkins for you when that happens.) But if applied correctly, Mellowcreme Pumpkins can be transformed into first-rate social currency. Here’s how to have happiness (not just, “Ooooh, I have so many Mellowcremes happiness.” That, plus real, legit, all-of-life happiness).

How to make Brachs Mellowcreme Pumpkins = Happiness:

Hide roughly half of them from yourself. This should be fairly simple, as you just have to entrust them to a friend who genuinely couldn’t care less.

Enjoy your roughly 2.5-pound personal stash.

Talk incessantly to your Brachs-Mellowcreme-Pumpkin-loving friends about how much you’re enjoying said stash.

Wait until they’re impossible to find in stores. This may involve waiting through about 1 hour of post-Halloween candy-clearance time. Encourage your friends to have unflagging determination to find a treasure trove of clearance Pumpkins. Also reinforce the absolute truth that only Brachs Mellowcreme Pumpkins are actually Mellowcreme Pumpkins and that no generic substitute could ever sate their ever-growing need for the real deal.

Determine whether you can part with some of your stashed Pumpkins, or if you need to buy another 5 lb. bag from Candy Favorites.

Portion out whatever quantity of Mellowcreme Pumpkins you’re willing to share. (These don’t have to be equal, and portion sizes can certainly be in proportion to the amount that you care for and enjoy the company of each friend. Don’t forget to include a portion for yourself for the middle of summer.)

Receive whatever you want most in life — love, glory, honor, accolades, forgiveness, peace, and the end of hunger in your lifetime (only amongst your friends, of course, and with regard to the very specific hunger for Brachs Mellowcreme Pumpkins.)

If this doesn’t work, make new friends. They’ve clearly been deceiving you with a false, less-than-all-in sort of love for Mellowcreme Pumpkins. And when someone does that, you’ve no use for them. You, after all, are a person who will share your favorite hard-to-find thing out of the goodness of your heart 😉

If you are one of those people that get a boosted ego from kids thinking you gave out the best candy on Halloween, then go out and buy a couple boxes of Caramellos. I don’t believe I’ve ever gotten a Caramello in my Halloween bag, but if I did I’m sure I was ecstatic.

This candy seems to have sort of flown under the radar and hasn’t quite made it to the popularity level of the Snickers, Reese’s, Kit Kat, Milky Way and those kinds of candies. But in quality, this Cadbury candy is at the same if not a higher level than those.

The Cadbury Caramello comes in four milk chocolate squares filled with a stringy almost liquid caramel. When you break one square off from the others, that string of caramel connects the two, and when you bite into one you usually can’t prevent a little caramel from sticking to your lips and chin.

I remember this as being my older brother, David’s, favorite candy and so naturally I wanted it to be my favorite candy too. That wasn’t too difficult to make happen. One bite into this milk chocolatey, creamy caramely piece of candy and I immediately fell in love.

And for those of you that pronounce caramel as carmel, here is proof that you are pronouncing it incorrectly. You don’t pronounce this candy as carmello, it is pronounced how it is spelled, carAmello.

However you look at it, there are few candies better than Reese's Peanut Butter Cups

Sharability: 5

Denture Danger: 2

Convenience: 3

Novelty: 8

Overall: 9

“There’s no wrong way to eat a Reese’s” that was the slogan in all of the Reese’s commercials when I was growing up. My personal preference has always been poking out the center with my thumb to eat the extra peanut buttery center first and then the ring of milk chocolate with the residue of peanut butter second. Taking a bit out of it like a cookie works too, and so does plopping the whole thing into your mouth for a mouthful of chocolate peanut butter flavor.

The value packs with three or four peanut butter cups always seemed like a lot to me. After one, I’m satisfied, but craving one more. So two really is the perfect number, after that they don’t taste as good and you wish you hadn’t eaten so many.

That’s a great excuse to share this delicious candy. Also, I highly recommend that you have a thirst quencher within arms reach when eating a Reese’s peanut butter cup. The chocolate and peanut butter definitely do their job in making you thirsty. I’m a water drinking so I’d say always have water by your side with this candy, but I’m sure milk is great with it too.

Harry Burnett Reese was the creator of the Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup, hence the name. He was originally employed by Milton S. Hershey, but left to start his own candy company. The H.B. Reese Candy Company was established in Hershey, Pennsylvania in Reese’s basement. In 1963 Reese’s candy company was bought by Hershey for over 23 million dollars and began making the peanut butter cups in 1928.

Reese’s have always been a hit at Halloween. As a kid I would always be sure to have a nice pile of Reese’s cups at the end of the night. They weren’t always my favorite candy, but it was still nice to have them as a highly valued trading item.

ReeseSticks are a great branch product of Reese’s. They slogan on the side of the package reads “The Crisp you Can’t Resist,” and this couldn’t be more true. Wafer cookies are always addicting, but a Reese’s wafer cookie is one-of-a-kind. They are my roommate’s favorite candy. He explained, “It is just so good! It’s like a crunchy Reese’s.”

Since Halloween is right around the corner, I have been focusing on blogging about the best candies to hand out on Halloween. There were the candies that my friends and I would to hoard and boast about who had more.

As great as it is to give out the popular favorites, don’t forget that kids love variety. Don’t be afraid to switch it up and give something out that you aren’t sure kids will like, because if everyone gave out Reese’s…

One thing I got most excited for as a kid—and when I say kid, I mean until I graduated high school. Yes, I trick or treated every year until college. It’s not every day that you can ring a doorbell and be greeted with a costume, a smile, and free candy—were the “full size” candies. So many people give you the little fun size, and bite size which aren’t bad, they just aren’t special.

Even if the full size bar wasn’t a candy I liked, the idea of the full size was so exciting. We’d see our friends on the street and let them know “The house with the Steelers pumpkin is giving out full size snickers!!” and those kids would run off in excitement to find the house and collect their full size candy.

The bragging at the end of the night would usually revolve around who had more full size candies. This doesn’t mean you have to blow your bank account on full sizers to make the kids happy, I’m just informing. Whatever candy you may choose to give out, I’m sure the trick-or-treaters won’t be disappointed. Have a happy Halloween!

You may recall me mentioning in my 3 Musketeers blog that 3 Musketeers was once my favorite candy bar. That was true until I found 3 Musketeers with caramel, the Milky Way. Rich chocolate, creamy caramel, smooth nougat as it is described on the wrapper. (I find it amusing that every candy with caramel uses the adjective ‘creamy’ to describe it, I guess they like alliteration more than the truth). If I were to use a word to describe the caramel in the Milky Way it would probably be gloopy.

The Milky Way Midnight dark has it’s own category of aesthetics and taste. As described on the package “Rich, Dark Chocolate, Golden Caramel, Vanilla Nougat” notice how the adjective describing the caramel is not creamy. The caramel in the dark chocolate Milky Way is no more golden that the caramel in the original, but the colors it contrasts with (dark brown and white) make it appear more golden and so I guess the marketing team at Mars decided to take advantage of this contrast and change up the adjective.

In my personal opinion the original Milky Way can’t be reckoned with, milk chocolate, fluffy chocolate nougat, and gloopy caramel are just too tasty together.

Frank C. Mars is credited with the creation the Milky Way bar in 1923 even though his son Forrest Mars claims to have come up with the idea. The Milky Way was the first filled chocolate bar and Mars Inc.’s first candy bar. The idea for the candy was inspired by a popular malted milkshake at the time. Outside of the United States the Milky Way is made without the caramel (a 3 Musketeers bar under the Milky Way name). The Milky Way was originally produced in chocolate and vanilla, the vanilla bar being called the Forever Yours bar. The Forever Yours bar was discontinued in 1979 but returned in 1989 under the alias Milky Way Dark bar, and in 2000 was renamed again to the Milky Way Midnight bar.

A vintage advertisement for Baby Ruth and Butterfingers Candy Bar advertisement from the "Golden Age" of candy when candy bars only cost $.05

Sharability: 2

Denture Danger: 6

Convenience: 5

Novelty: 9

Overall: 9

Nestlé’s Butterfingers are at the top of my favorite candy bar list. A Butterfinger is a “crispety, crunchety, peanut-buttery” chocolate covered bar of a candy flaky peanut-butter flavored filling that resembles peanut brittle.

You probably aren’t going to want to share much of this candy bar, which will leave you with a lap full of crumbs and chunks of the peanut butter filling stuck in your teeth. Luckily those chunks will provide you with a little snack when you are craving a little more after you finish the bar.

The Curtiss Candy Company invented Butterfingers in 1923. The name was chosen in a public contest by a guy whose nickname was Butterfinger. That doesn’t sound like the most flattering nickname as a butterfinger usually describes someone who is clumsy, for example, a football player who can’t catch the ball. Butterfinger was bought by Nabisco and then by Nestlé in 1990 who currently advertises Butterfinger under the slogans, “Follow the Finger,” and “Break out of the Ordinary.”

Fun Facts:From 1990 to 2001 The Simpsons from the Fox show had a strong advertising campaign using slogans such as “Nobody better lay a finger on my Butterfinger!” and “Nothin’ like a Butterfinger!” After Butterfinger stopped using the Simpsons for advertising, the Simpsons displayed a scene in which Butterfinger bars were unable to be burned and a character says, “even the fire doesn’t want them.” I wouldn’t want to be in the middle of that little dispute.

As an April Fools day prank in 2008 Nestlé announced that they had changed the name of the candy bar to “The Finger.” Nestlé created a whole website around the spoof saying that the previous brand name had been clumsy and awkward. Now you can find silly videos to follow this prank on the Butterfinger Comedy Network.

When New Years would come around and my bag of Halloween candy was at it’s end there would always be a couple Mounds and Almond Joy sitting at the bottom of my pillowcase bag. I don’t know why, because they really aren’t bad candies, but the coconut just didn’t satisfy my childhood taste buds the way Reese’s and Kit Kats did. My dad was always happy to put me out of my misery and eat the Mounds and Almond Joy for me.

Though I’m not usually a huge dark chocolate fan, it works well with the sweet coconut flavor. And I actually think I prefer it to the milk chocolate Almond Joy. The dark chocolate pulls away from the extremely sweet coconut flavor and the milk chocolate just adds to the sweetness, which is where the almond comes in.

It adds another twist to the flavor and does its job to dull down the sweetness. So both are good in their own unique way, it just depends if you are feeling like a nut or not.

Mounds and Almond Joy are sister Hershey’s products originally produced by the Peter Paul Company. The Peter Paul name is still printed on the candies’ wrappers even though the company itself no long exits. Peter Paul Halajian and some other investors created the Peter Paul Candy Company in 1919. The company originally sold a variety of candies, but because of sugar shortages during WWII they decided to focus on the production of the Mounds bar, which was created in 1920.

In 1946, Almond Joy replaced a candy called the Dream Bar, which was filled with coconut and diced almonds. A famous jingle of the 1970s ad campaign for the sister candies sang, “Sometimes you feel like a nut, sometimes you don’t.”

If you are feeling like a milk chocolatey nut, grab an Almond Joy, and if you’re feeling more sophisticated, go for the dark chocolate, nutless Mounds. If you want to take the risk with the youngsters on Halloween night, go for it, at least you know the parents will be happy.

The original Snickers bar is peanut butter nougat topped with caramel and roasted peanuts all dipped in milk chocolate. The Snickers bar not only satisfies your taste buds, but it fills you up a bit too.

I like to bring a Snickers bar with me when I go skiing because it fits in my pocket, tastes good frozen, and gives me the energy and filler that I need to keep my skiing in check.

Every year in the U.S., sales of the Snickers bar reach $2 billion making it the best selling chocolate bar of all time. It was the Mars Company’s second product in 1930 and it was named after the Mars family’s favorite horse. The bar is made by Masterfoods USA, which is a division of Mars.

Until 1990, the Snickers bar was sold under the name “Marathon” in the UK and in Ireland, but just like Mars standardized the Twix name, they decided that it was more beneficial to make an internationally consistent name for marketing reasons. And it worked. After the name was changed, it moved in rankings from 9th most popular to the 3rd most popular bar. However, Britain is not happy about the name change and there is currently an online petition website—bringbackmarathon.org—that is trying to bring the Marathon name back. It says “…in Britain we are proud to be different to everyone else…

[The Marathon Bar is] part of British History, it’s part of our culture…. Too many things get chopped and changed by the advertising men…” and it goes on to try and convince readers to sign a petition to bring back the original name despite the rise in sales that the new name brings.

Snickers bars have evolved since the 1930s. Snickers Almond is also a satisfyingly delicious bar with a unique unexpected strong almond crunch and flavor. It is surprising to me how much the taste is altered by swapping the peanuts out with almonds. It creates for Snickers diversity that really works (as opposed to the Twix and Twix PB).

The Snickers Dark adds a bitter twist and at first bite makes me think it would taste good with coffee. Again, it is another successful adaptation to the world of Snickers diversity. I personally like the smooth sweet taste of milk chocolate better than the bitter dark chocolate and would prefer a Snickers almond or Snickers original but you semisweet chocolate lovers won’t regret it if you “chow-in-the-dark.”

In the heart of Halloween, Snickers is one of those classics with which you just can’t go wrong. But this year instead of going with the original snickers like everybody else, diversify and pick up Snickers dark or Snickers almond. Your trick-or-treaters will be thankful and intrigued by the variety.

It is the eve of October 31st and the witches, monsters, and princesses are going house to house trying to make their pillowcases as heavy as possible. One secret that we know is that quality is better than quantity.

We make sure to get pop rocks pumpkin patch orange edition for our trick-or-treaters. What could be more perfect for Halloween? You just know that at the end of the night each kid dumps out his big bag of candy onto the table. And when he does that he will pick up that pumpkin patch orange pop rocks and put it aside in the “best candy” along with pile with the full size snickers and package of four Reese’s Cups. Wouldn’t it feel good knowing that you gave every kid-in-costume one of their favorite candies of an entire night of candy collecting?

The orange and green pop rocks feel like hundreds of tiny explosions are going off in your mouth. The actual flavor of the pop rocksis sweet without any particular flavoring even though the package says orange flavored. The best way to eat them is to rip off the top and pour them into your mouth, that way you don’t waist any poppers on you hand.

You can pour them on to your tongue so that it sounds like bacon sizzling on the stove. The pop rocks tingle is quote soothing and if you close your eyes it feels and sounds like a rain storm is happening inside your mouth.You can feel them popping all the way down your throat and in your teeth and it’s always nice to get that unexpected pop after it you think it is all over.

After you have held the bag upside down over your gaping mouth, it is always fun to rip open the bag and lick it clean making sure to savor every last pop.

So for this coming Halloween, you know what candy to get, and for the meantime, who couldn’t go without a little extra pop rocking in their life?